Members of the prime minister's People of Freedom (PDL) party have backed the idea of his daughter becoming a candidate at the next elections, a scenario which would invite comparisons with the Bush and Kennedy dynasties in the United States and Greece's Papandreou and Karamanlis families.

With Mr Berlusconi holding on to power with only the slimmest of majorities, and accused of having sex with an underage prostitute and then abusing his powers to try to conceal the crime, it is increasingly likely that Italy will go to the polls well before his mandate expires in 2013.

Miss Berlusconi, 44, who is known for her love of short skirts and high heels, is already being groomed to take over her father's multi-billion pound business empire. The eldest of his five children, she heads his Fininvest holding company as well as Mondadori, his publishing empire.

She already has the wealth and the connections – in the current Forbes list of the world's 100 most powerful women, she is ranked 48, ahead of Julia Gillard, the Australian prime minister, and Jordan's Queen Rania.

The suggestion that Miss Berlusconi might exchange the board room for parliament was greeted with enthusiasm by party faithful last week.

She would be "a huge asset toItaly", said Michaela Biancofiore, an MP in Mr Berlusconi's party. "She is an emblem of our country who's recognised around the world for her managerial talents. If she went into politics it would be a shining example for all us women in the PDL."

Margherita Boniver, another government MP, said: "If it's true it would be a positive thing, because she is a very strong, decisive person, of the highest quality, who has inherited many of the strengths of her father."

Isabella Bertolini, a senior PDL figure in the lower house of parliament, was equally effusive. "She is intelligent and capable. People of ability are most welcome in politics because they are sadly lacking."

Italy's right-wing press also threw their support behind a future candidacy. "Marina to become the nightmare of the Left," ran a headline in Il Tempo newspaper last week, above a flattering picture.

Even Oggi (Today), a weekly magazine which is not allied to the Right, asked: "After 20 years of Silvio, another 20 of Marina? In the last few days the Rubygate crisis has given a push... to the idea of Silvio resigning, with a simultaneous entry into politics by Marina."

She has a high profile in Italy, helped by her regular appearance in glossy tabloid magazines; last year photographs of her sunbathing topless were printed in a gossip magazine that belongs to her father, suggesting that she had no objection to their use.

"If things get really bad for Berlusconi, the only person that he will really trust is a member of his family," said Roberto D'Alimonte, a political analyst at Luiss University in Rome.

"Of his five children, she is the only one with the guts to do the job. She has the same determination as her father. She may not have his ability to communicate to people, but that can be developed.

"The fact that she is not even an MP is not a problem – you don't have to be an elected official to become the prime minister of Italy. The party would accept her because it's a creature of Berlusconi. Everyone in it owes their career, their income, their fortunes to him so he can impose his will. And I think a good proportion of Berlusconi voters would accept her too."

Mr Berlusconi – last week described by one Italian commentator as a cross between Hugh Hefner and the Emperor Tiberius - is renowned for plucking people from obscurity and propelling them into office, particularly if they are female and good looking.

After taking a shine to Mara Carfagna, a men's magazine model who had posed topless, the billionaire businessman appointed her minister for equal opportunities in 2008.

Nicole Minetti, a dancer and model whose British mother runs a dance academy in the Adriatic coast resort of Rimini, was similarly talent-spotted. A dental hygienist, she was among a team that helped repair Mr Berlusconi's teeth after he was hit in the mouth with a statuette at a political rally in Dec 2009.

Within months she was elected to the regional assembly of Lombardy, the wealthy region around Milan.

She is at the centre of the scandal, accused by prosecutors of recruiting prostitutes and other young women for the prime minister's "bunga bunga" sex parties.

Wire tap transcripts emerged last week in which she called the prime minister "a piece of shit" and said he was "just trying to save his flabby arse".

Many Italians would see Miss Berlusconi's lack of political experience as an advantage, given the low regard in which they hold most politicians. "He used the same argument when he entered politics – that he was a fresh face, an outsider who was unencumbered by debts to political allies," said Prof D'Alimonte.

Miss Berlusconi, who is married to a former dancer from Milan's La Scala opera with whom she has two children, has proved herself a loyal supporter of her father. She has praised him as a man with "nerves of steel" who would be remembered "as the longest serving and most loved leader in the history of the Italian republic."

She has lashed out at his critics as he has been buffeted by a series of corruption cases related to his business dealings, as well as the lurid sex scandals currently besetting him.

Miss Berlusconi has said that the suggestion that she might jump into politics is "hypothetical". But her father was similarly coy in the early 1990s, shortly before he entered politics and became prime minister for the first time.

Another family succession on the Right of European politics may provide food for thought for the Berlusconis. Earlier this month Jean-Marie Le Pen, 82, stood down as leader of France's National Front and handed the reins to his youngest daughter, Marine.

Mr Berlusconi insisted on Friday that he deserved to be prime minister and would fight to remain so "in the interests of the country."

In a video message to supporters he said: "As you all know, firestorms don't scare me, and the bigger they are, the more I'm convinced that I have to react in the interest of all citizens, in the interest of our country."

As he defiantly clings to power, two wildly different versions of what went on in his homes are jostling for public attention.

Prosecutors have presented to parliament hundreds of pages of wire tapped telephone conversations and other evidence which suggests that women were lavished with cash, jewellery and other rewards to dress up in kinky police and nurse uniforms, parade around topless and go to bed with the prime minister.

Mr Berlusconi's lawyers have lodged an aggressive counter-offensive, in which several of those same women testify that his dinner parties were demure affairs in which they drank mineral water and Coca Cola, sang karaoke tunes and watched feature films.

Ordinary Italians – and the country's courts, if Mr Berlusconi is sent to trial – must decide in coming weeks which version they choose to believe.